Yvonne De Carlo

Margaret Yvonne Middleton (September 1, 1922 – January 8, 2007), known professionally as Yvonne De Carlo, was a Canadian-American actress, dancer and singer. She became a Hollywood film star and sex symbol in the 1940s and 1950s, made several musical recordings, and later acted on television and stage.

De Carlo was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, and was enrolled in a local dance school by her mother when she was three. By the early 1940s, she and her mother had moved to Los Angeles, where De Carlo entered beauty contests and worked as a dancer in nightclubs. In 1942, she signed a three-year contract with Paramount Pictures, where she got uncredited bit parts in important films. Her first lead was for producer E.B. Derr in the 1943 James Fenimore Cooper adventure Deerslayer.

She obtained her breakthrough role in Salome, Where She Danced (1945), a Universal Pictures release produced by Walter Wanger, who described her as "the most beautiful girl in the world." The film's publicity and success turned her into a star, and she signed a five-year contract with Universal. Universal starred her in its lavish Technicolor productions, such as Frontier Gal (1945), Song of Scheherazade (1947), and Slave Girl (1947). Cameramen voted her "Queen of Technicolor" three years in a row. Tired of being typecast as exotic women, she made her first serious dramatic performances in two film noirs, Brute Force (1947) and Criss Cross (1949).

De Carlo received further recognition as an actress for her leading performances in the British comedies Hotel Sahara (1951), The Captain's Paradise (1953), and Happy Ever After (1954). Her career reached its peak when eminent producer-director Cecil B. DeMille cast her as Moses' Midianite wife, Sephora, in his biblical epic The Ten Commandments (1956). For this role, she won a Laurel Award for Topliner Supporting Actress. Her success continued with other notable starring roles in Flame of the Islands (1956), Death of a Scoundrel (1956), Raw Edge (1956), Band of Angels (1957), and The Sword and the Cross (1958), in which she portrayed Mary Magdalene.